I hear a lot of talk in
the autism community about self-stimulatory behavior, known
colloquially and in shorthand as “Stims” or “Stimming.” For
the most part, the self-advocates have convinced most people that
stimming is good, it relieves stress/helps focus, and that autists
should be allowed to stim. This is good, but I would like to go
further than that and say that everyone
stims.
Yes,
that's right. I did, in fact, say everyone
stims. Don't believe me? Think of a time to when someone was
nervous or impatient. Did they rap their fingers? That's a stim.
Did they tap their foot? Stim. Play with their hair? Yes, that's a
stim too. Even things like whistling could be a stim. The point is,
everyone does it to some extent; the only reason autistic stims seem
so unusual is that our versions are different.
There
is also of course the seemingly unusual sources and frequencies of
the need to stim, but those are due to our hypersensitivity to
sensory stimuli and changes. A lot of the non-autistic world is
foreign to us, and therefore we have a higher level of anxiety when
dealing with said world. I have a certain degree of confidence that
were I to pluck a non-autist from their home country and put them in
a foreign land, they would be stimming much more than they do at
home.
“But
Cisco, people look at my child strange when he stims!” Does the
child notice? If the child does not notice, then perhaps a
re-evaluation of exactly why this bothers you is in order. Likewise
if the child notices but values the joy stimming brings over the
strange looks they receive. Now, granted, extenuating circumstances
do apply to this: If the kid is flailing their arms about in the
knife section of a store or in a museum, there are practical concerns
there.
Still, if you must
control a child's stimming for whatever reason, I would suggest
evaluating the stims and channeling them into one or both of two paths: Either find
a hobby or skill that utilizes this behavior and encourage them to
pursue that, or find an “accepted” stim similar to what the child
is actually doing and see if that relieves them in a similar manner.
